73 COLLECTING: OBJECTS THAT FASCINATE Hold an object between your fingers and realize that there is a piece of history in it. Analyze it, discover its details, imagine, research, and understand what each of them means. This is a very familiar feeling for collectors. The relationship between the human being with the things which surround him has already been studied by different theorists. Spanish author Gómez de la Serna brings about a pertinent reflection: things are our salvation if we find in them what it means to be human. And that’s why they fascinate us. We want to know them to get to know ourselves and our own history. Men are born collectors, and there are hints of that back in prehistory - even though the items were accumulated in a disorderly fashion back then. The beginning of collecting, in fact, is not a consensus among researchers. While some agree to place it in prehistoric times, others show that its appearance occurred in the Middle Ages with the famous collections of sacred weapons and relics. As of the French Revolution (1789-1799), the collections originate museums, which consider their collections public. The fact is that every object can be appealing; it depends on the eyes of the beholder. That’s why there are collectors of stamps - the philatelists - cars, postcards, banknotes, coins. In this book, we want to delight the latter. Those who are thrilled to see a coin minted seven centuries before Christ, to follow the evolution of the monetary standard of a given region, to observe the difference between the minting of each civilization - the Greek drachmas and staters, the Roman asses. And, also, the ones who wish to travel through Brazil, past the réis and its many series, cruzeiros, cruzados, reais. Strictly speaking, numismatics is the scientific study of coins - which are defined as metallic pieces minted by an authority and which have liberating power, that is, they serve as money. However, today the term has also been used as a synonym for collecting - something controversial among scholars. The interest in collecting coins was first seen in the aristocracy of the Roman Empire, also spread by European kings in the Middle Ages. Collections such as Louis XIV’s, combined with the attempt of humanists to rescue ancient culture, were one of the main factors accountable for the official appearance of numismatics during the Renaissance, when the organization of these collections was first seen. Today, there are countless groups of people who are passionate about history and art engraved on coins. The great challenge of a collector is to add treasures into his collection. The difficulty in finding a coin, its state of preservation, and the number of collectors who want it are what determines the value of a coin, not necessarily how old it is. HISTORICAL COLLECTION SANTANDER BRASIL - VALUE, HISTORY, AND DIVERSITY Pieces full of value and history fill the rooms and corridors Santander Brasil, downtown Porto Alegre (RS). Coins, checks, notepads, booklets and accounting books, certificates, bills, receipts, plates, photographs and daguerreotypes, pins, big and small machines, safes and piggy banks, certificates, locks, keys and keyrings, staplers and punchers, scales for gold and for letters. These and other items are perpetuated in the technical archive and in the displays, available to those who wish to travel back in time and who wish to know what the banks from the old days were like. In order to organize this diversity, objects were sorted into broad typologies. The collections are grouped in eight areas: bibliography, documentation, iconography, machinery, medal, furniture, numismatics, and, finally, exonumia, scripophily and notaphily. The content of the collection is made up of institutional history as well as the history of the building it is installed in, a faithful representative of the neoclassical architecture of the early twentieth century. The historical collection of the institution, rich in value and history, was formed under the eyes and hands of bank employees concerned with the preservation of memory. With the help and support of directors and colleagues from other museums, they nurtured